According to the article the schools have combined to sale 70,000 season tickets for the 2007 season and a question popped up in my mind: Will this boom hurt the number of fans that go to Linfield games this year?

During 2006 Linfield had an average of over 2,881 fans at home games which was a large drop from the 4,417 fans that overfilled the ‘Catdome during 2005. A few things contributed to this including Linfield being ranked #1 all of 2005 and some home playoff games that brought in big gates. Then you add hosting Menlo (which just kills the avg), terrible weather for Whitworth, and we had a big drop in the numbers for 2006. The night games did not have the desired effect in increasing attendance as the Willamette day game was the biggest attended game for 2006 (3,926) but the night games still drew solid crowds.

There are other factors in why people come to the our games (the weather, the match-up, the quality of the team, etc) but make no mistake that what the large schools do have an impact on the ‘Catdome turnout.

Linfield is always going to have its hard core base of fans that would rather be at the ‘Catdome on Saturday than go to a SuperBowl but after comparing schedules I’m curious if there is an impact at all. Here is Linfield’s home schedule below and who of the large schools will be at home during the same dates.

So besides the PLU game, the ‘Cats will be competing with the Beavers and Viks all season long. I have no way of measuring this and does it really matter in the grand scheme of the 2007 season? No it doesn't, but I think we all can agree that a ‘Catdome busting at the seams is better than a ‘Catdome filled to the rafters.

3 comments:

Anonymous
said...

I think that this years squad should bring the attendance up at the Catdome. Exciting offense, some great new and old talent and local names that will be in the mix more often. Armstrong, all the Lemons, Lever, Rogers. This should make things fun for the locals.

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Catdome Connections

Why "ADvantage Catdome"

I’ve had a number of people ask me why the blog is called ADvantage Catdome. So instead of repeating the explanation over and over, I thought I would just lay it out here.

Back in 1986 my father took me to my very first Linfield game, the final regular season game vs. Pacific (Linfield would roll the Boxers on their way to their 3rd NAIA title). I was 10 years old at the time and I can remember seeing these banners the pep squad/students have hung up on the fences around the Catdome. They read “We have the ADvantage”.

I pulled on my dad’s shirt and asked him what that meant. He pointed to the coaches box in the far back of Memorial stadium and said “You see that man there? That’s Coach Rustchman. He’s Linfield’s advantage.”

It wasn't until later that my dad told me Coach Rustchman’s first name was “Ad”. Get it now? Good. Go ‘Cats!